A new post for ALWP: musings
Our original post has gotten so crowded with back-and-forth, out-of-order and deleted posts that I thought a new thread might be a valued idea. So, with a second viewing of A LADY WITHOUT PASSPORT behind us, assorted ideations....
John Hodiak's Hungarian sounded authentic enough, but his Spanish accent! "See-nor" [sorry, I can't print a tilde over the n]. Surprising, really, if he can do all right with Hungarian. Oh well, at least he didn't have to pass as Cuban. Maybe Metro should have rehired Desi Arnaz?
The downed pilot shooting that snake near the end was hilarious. Raise gun in hand, jerk down fast, shoot! Four times in a row: blam, blam, blam, blam, up and down, up and down, just the way gangsters did it in "The Adventures of Superman". Very convincing.
Speaking of "Superman", I saw two guys who later appeared in episodes of that venerable series. Trevor Bardette, who played the Cuban police captain eager to help his American better, John Hodiak, appeared in the first season's episode "The Human Bomb", as Bet-a-Million Butler, who bet he could hold Superman immobile while a crime was being committed, by taking Lois Lane out onto the ledge of the Daily Planet building, while strapped with dynamite. Then, the fifth season "The Prince Albert Coat", about the kid who gives away his great-grandfather's coat crammed with Confederate money, co-starred Daniel White, as Mike, the lanky, goofy henchman, who in ALWP played the airport officer who phones James Craig and tells him the plane he's looking for has been there all day.
Why did George Macready start using his gun to kill people? At worst, they'd have had him on a smuggling rap. Now they've got him for murder, or attempted murder. Anyway, if he'd escaped, think what would have become of him in 1959. After that, he'd have become an acclaimed hero to the Cuban exile community in Miami, for helping get so many away from Castro. A pal of Nixon and Reagan. How time changes things.
David Raksin's music was very unusual for this type of film, and much the better for it. Kind of bouncy, light, lively, a rather unserious score for a crime movie, and quite a lot of passages sound just like themes he recycled for his famous score for THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL two years later. (Raksin's most famous theme was for LAURA in 1944.)
I have now knowingly seen a very young Steven Hill! With full hair and constantly lit cigarette. Ya gotta start somewhere. "Take the plea, get on with the next case!" Now I see that it was from working for James Craig ("I'll get him the next time") where Adam Schiff derived his law enforcement philosophy.
Some guys later seen in 50s sci-fi films...King Donovan, an NYPD investigator at the beginning, later in THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS; and Robert Osterloh, the NYPD guy who flew down to Miami right after that, in the tacked-on ending of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, as the orderly bringing in the accident victim who'd they'd dug out from under all those pods...a movie which co-starred King Donovan! Both men also in many other movies, but great familiar faces.
That Cuban dancer, in the club where Hodiak goes about 25 minutes in, was remarkably under-dressed by 1950 Hollywood standards, a very beautiful and sexy woman in her own, non-Lamarr right...whoever she was, 58 years ago.
But as for Hedy...hey, if all illegal immigrants looked like her, I'd say, Mr. Bush, tear down that 750-mile wall you idiots want to put up along our 2200-mile border with Mexico, and let all the Hedys in! Hodiak and me, we're humanitarians.
Anyway, just some new thoughts on a new thread for A LADY WITHOUT PASSPORT. Just think...a site completely devoid of any comment a little over a month ago, now the scene of about 1274 posts. The Power of IMDb!